But some leftists oppose those government welfare agencies, too, London School of Economics professor David Graeber says.

The leftist critique of private and public bureaucracies, Graeber explains, is that they “employ thousands of people to make us feel bad about ourselves.”

Bureaucrats pushing paper decide what we and our work are worth. But somewhat ironically, Graeber suggests, it’s those bureaucrats who perform the most meaningless work of all.

If we gave everyone a lump sum basic income and eliminated those bureaucratic jobs, we’d all be better off, he says.

Graeber doesn’t self-identify as an anarchist (“anarchism is something you do”), but as an activist in the Occupy and student loan movements, this is all part of his concern that workers today are “wage slaves.”